Delving more deeply into the content of your blog post, I recognized the pattern of healing revealed in your dream, which existed before the dream. Pretty cool! You are Anne of “today” and your dream of falling into the elevator shaft and emerging alive was the manifestation of who you are in the “now”.

I suppose that is obvious to the reader, but I found it particularly insightful; like an image being photographed. As the image—you existed before the photograph. Your dream enabled you to be aware of the epiphany. Similarly, beauty or other existing attributes within us can be hidden from our awareness. This is where the power of projection can enable us to see what is otherwise concealed (as I shared in my last post).

In our more formative years when we fell prey to the abusive words and actions of those we loved, trusted or admired, the experience can cause an indelible and tragic affect—following us through life. Not until we become self-aware are we able to exchange the lies for truth.

What’s love got to do with it? ~ Tina Turner

“Love is not a second hand emotion”, as Tine Turner sang in 1986. Healthy, balanced relationships of intimacy and longevity can only bring fulfillment when two people give and receive from each other.

The spiritual energy that is generated from such selfless activity is fundamentally the life source that fulfills our being and of which the sum of energy is greater than its two sources. This type of relationship requires the maturity fashioned through the healing journey of self-awareness.

The second greatest commandment from the Christian perspective is to, “love your neighbor as yourself”. Authentic love requires the humility to see our selves in the manner in which God has created us. It is essential to identify our individual beauty, viability, goodness and worth in order to see our selves as a reflection of God’s love.

1 Corinthians 13:4-13 is the love “litmus test” we can apply to any and all relationships! In one degree or another, these attributes need to be familiar to a relationship. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being “not at all” and 10 “all the time”, if the following attributes are not expressed above a level of 5, there will be issues if not failure in the relationship:

3 Though I should give away to the poor all that I possess, and even give up my body to be burned—if I am without love, it will do me no good whatever. 4 Love is always patient and kind; love is never jealous; love is not boastful or conceited. 5 it is never rude and never seeks its own advantage, it does not take offence or store up grievances. 6 Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but finds its joy in the truth. 7 It is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. 8 Love never comes to an end. …11 When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and see things as a child does, and think like a child; but now that I have become an adult, I have finished with all childish ways. 12 Now we see only reflections in a mirror, mere riddles, but then we shall be seeing face to face. Now I can know only imperfectly; but then I shall know just as fully as I am myself known. 13 As it is, these remain: faith, hope and love, the three of them; and the greatest of them is love.

Love is not a “second hand emotion”, but a life priority that does not jeopardize the source of our passion and vocation, but supports it’s existence with humility. Love does not hold us captive to someone else’s ideas of who or what we “should” be for them. On the contrary, a relationship steeped in the realistic and biblical “litmus test” of love, gives us the freedom to grow, mature and develop in a manner that shares life with others. Truth can be a source of emotional, intellectual and spiritual anguish, but like God’s healing cautery, it may wound as it heals.

“Who needs a heart, when a heart can be broken”, sings Tina.

My response to this woman of valor—we all do! A heart that can be broken is one that is open to the inner resources, bringing a cure to life’s sorrows, wisdom and beauty, making us a capacity for God’s glory…“on earth as it will be in heaven”.

Note: Bro. Dennis and Anne are exploring a unique collaboration with Dusan Jaukovic and Jelena Malesevic, owners of Morfium Couture. These images are from an earlier Morfium collection. Details of their proposed collaboration will be revealed in the coming months.

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